Petrelis Files

Husband of Gay Facebook Co-Founder May Buy House Seat

Does America really need another super rich person, gay or straight, buying themselves a seat in either the House or Senate? I don't think so but I'm likely among a minority of gays who are shrugging their shoulders over this news from the Atlantic Wire earlier this week, emphasis added:

Just three days after his husband Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes relaunched The New Republic, 26-year-old investor and activist Sean Eldridge filed papers to run for a seat in the House of Representatives. Eldridge filed a statement of organization for his campaign, "Sean Eldridge for Congress," and a statement of candidacy seeking the 19th District seat in New York's Hudson Valley . . . It won't be an easy race, but Eldridge is remarkably well-positioned to be a worthy contender for someone who was studying political philosophy at Brown less than five years ago. The fact that he has Chris "The Kid Who Made Obama President" Hughes and a fortune worth as much as three-quarters of a billion dollars certainly helps.

That kind of money could so easily buy a lot of affordable housing for LGBT seniors, youths and those with low- or moderate incomes, but solving the economic inequality between the 1% of Americans and those of us in the 99% is not on the agenda of Eldridge and Hughes.

If you've seen anything in the past year, or ever, about any LGBT "equality" millionaires or billionaires, such as Jon Stryker or Andrew Solomon or Henry van Ameringen and their ilk, committing funds to address the housing or healthcare needs of ordinary gay folks, let me know about it.

I'd love to wake up one day and read this headline: "Gay Billionaires Building Thousands of Homes for Low-Income LGBT People". Economic justice and solving wealth disparities simply is not on the agenda of the wealthy gays.

Our national democracy will be ill-served if Eldridge buys himself a seat in Congress. We need to put an end, or at least seriously curb, the power of checkbook politics including when it's practiced by a gay Democrat.